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Press Release

Appointment Comes at a Time of Expansion for CCS
ANNANDALE-ON-HUDSON, N.Y. — The Center for Curatorial Studies (CCS) has named noted curator and arts organizer Tom Eccles as its executive director. Eccles, who since 1997 has been director and curator at The Public Art Fund in New York City, will take his position at the CCS on July 1, 2005, and will be responsible for the Center’s exhibitions program, strategic planning, and overall operations.
The appointment comes at time of expansion for the CCS. This spring the Center will break ground for a major renovation of its exhibition space, adding a new 16,800 - square-foot gallery wing, and renovating the library. The new exhibition space will enable the Center to display the Marieluise Hessel Collection, a significant collection of contemporary art on permanent loan to the Center from Hessel, cofounder and chair of the CCS. The Center for Curatorial Studies was founded in 1990 by Marieluise Hessel and Richard Black. The collection holds more than 1700 pieces representing over 900 artists from the 1950s to the present, including major works by Robert Mapplethorpe and Cindy Sherman to more current works by Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Gabriel Orozco, and Kara Walker. The expansion, due for completion in 2006, is being overseen by James Goettsch and Nada Andric, architects of the existing Center facilities.
“We are fortunate to have Tom Eccles joining us as executive director of the Center. His keen intellect and creative spirit will prove to be invaluable assets to the institution,” said Bard College President Leon Botstein.
Norton Batkin will continue as director of the Center’s graduate and research programs, as well as taking on the new role of Dean of Graduate Studies at Bard.
During his tenure at The Public Art Fund, Eccles presented more than eighty major exhibitions throughout the city, featuring works by such artists as Rachel Whiteread, Ilya Kabakov, Francis Alys, Mariko Mori, Julian Opie, Vik Muniz, Janet Cardiff, Martin Creed, Richard Long, and Barbara Kruger. He established an annual program of large-scale installations at Rockefeller Center, which has included major works by Jonathan Borofsky, Takashi Murakami, Nam June Paik, Louise Bourgeois, and Jeff Koons (Puppy).
He curated and produced an urban park program, commissioning new works for Madison Square Park by Wim Delvoye, Dan Graham, Mark Dion, Tony Oursler and others and created a collaborative network for extending museum retrospectives and exhibitions in the public sphere, working with Robert Storr at the Museum of Modern Art on Tony Smith in the City, as well as for last three Whitney Biennials. Eccles curated a number of survey exhibitions of monumental sculpture including Roy Lichtenstein at City Hall; Willem de Kooning in the Park; Rodin at Rockefeller Center; and Keith Haring on Park. The Public Art Fund’s “Tuesday Night Talks” brought dozens of preeminent artists to speak at the Great Hall at Cooper Union; the series has continued at the Tishman Auditorium of the New School.
He writes and speaks frequently on art, and has lectured and taught at the University of Texas, Austin; the Art Institute of Chicago; Brown University; CUNY; Cooper Union; Cornell; NYU; Parsons; and Princeton. He holds an M.A. in philosophy and Italian from the University of Glasgow, and studied aesthetics, semiotics, and philosophy at the University of Bologna.
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